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1 juNi4i»a»"")) THE 




KLONDIKE 



The New Gold Fields of Alaska and 
The Far North-West. 






Bv CAPT. JAMKS STEELE^ 



AlTHOK «>K 



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'' I'RONTiKR Army Skktchhs," "Cuban vSkhtchhs, 
" FiTR, Feathers and Ft/.z," Ktc, Etc, 



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CHICAGO: 

BRITTON-COMPANV, 
1897. 






Hi4'.i 



COPYRIGHT 

1S07 

riY JAMKvS \V. vSTE'ELH. 









T 



THE KLONDIKE, 




CHAPTER I. 

THE LATER ARGONAUTS. 

'7OT until July 14th, 1897, was the news re- 
ceived. There arrived at San Francisco an 
ocean steamer. She came from the north, 
and from a region hitherto locked against 
human interest b^^ a seal of ice. Few had ever 
gone there, and of that few some were returning now, 
and under circumstances such as attract public atten- 
tion when most other attractions fail. They were 
almost literally laden with gold. And from them a 
name was heard almost for the first time. The region 
they had left is called The Klondike. 

They were a strange company. No ship since 
the old Californian days had unloaded so motley a 
cargo. It was midsummer, but they had left the 
Klondike at the earliest possible moment. Their be- 
longings were peculiar. What baggage they carried 
was tied up in old blankets and pieces of canvas with 
ropes. Hundreds of people who did not know them, 
and had never heard before of the new land of gold, 
suddenly attracted, watched them as they came 
ashore. 



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THE NEW COLD FIELDS OF ALASKA. 5 

For most of them were rich, and had grown rich 
quickly. In every man's pocket there was a bag of 
virgin gold. In all this queer make- shift baggage 
there was more of it. It had been gathered in a 
wilderness where none but savages, and few of them, 
had ever lived, and where there will never be a farm, 
a factory, a college. How much wealth they carried 
ashore that day will never be precisely known, and 
already they are scattered and have been individually 
forgotten. 

When they went away they went singly or in small 
companies, and had nothing, and only vaguely knew 
themselves whither they were going, or why, or when 
they would return, or if they ever would. And now in 
the midst of ordinary life they suddenly step again 
over a gang-plank into the world, changed and fortu- 
nate men, bearing with them in its most attractive 
form that for which men have always been willing to 
do or dare or suffer almost any extreme — gold. 

The almost universal question rose : .Where did 
these men come from ? Where, and how far and 
what is this Klondike? In what form did they find 
this yellow treasure they brought with them? Can 
not others do as they did ? 

The interest is natural. Not since the days of 
1849, and not even then, has any event occurred quite 
as dramatic as the arrival of this northern steamer, 
and to all of the present generation the old tales have 
seemed half unreal and never to be repeated. The 
event was entirely unimportant except as to its in- 
terest for others, and the hopes it induced that a new 



THE KLONDIKE. 



era might dawn in the personal fortunes of thousands 
who might go as these did and finally return with the 
same yellow wealth. So The Klondike as a name, and 
an immense region lying around it that is as yet un- 




THE NORTHERN STEAMER. 

explored, is interesting thousands of people. The 
event is even likely to change in time the commercial 
aspects of this country and the world. A vast region, 
now as unknown as central Africa, and with climatic 



run NEW GOLD FIELDS OF ALASk'.l. 7 

conditions that but for gold would have forever barred 
it from civilization, is now destined to come forward 
and be formed into some semblance of order and occu- 
pancy ; perhaps at last to be made into the strangest 
commonwealth known to the history of the Saxon 
race. 

Young men, and even those in middle life, are now 
thinking of the long voyage, of the chances reserved 
fo ' them by fate, of how to get there, and of the dis- 
tant and uncertain day when they may return, not as 
i\\ ey are, but as those later argonauts were who landed 
in San Francisco and in a manner startled the world. 

It is natural with a race that hitherto has stopped 
at no obstacle. The situation is peculiar. The region 
is in all details practically unknown. The climate is 
the most severe that was ever attempted to be con- 
quered for purposes of even temporary residence hy- 
men of the temperate zones. The distances are very 
great by sea or land, and the obstacles and difficulties 
to be passed are greater than even those which existed 
when the paths between the Missouri and California 
were new- trodden and dimly known. 

To answer some of these questions ; to give an out- 
line of the situation so far as it is now known, or can 
be known until new and even more startling facts shall 
reach the world, and until new routes are made and 
men grow accustomed to the situation and have 
learned to avoid a larger number of its difficulties, is 
the purpose of this little volume. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE LAND AND THE JOURNEY. 

Since 1867 a huge territory called Alaska has more 
or less interested all Americans. Previous to that 
year it interested them very little, for it was known 
as Russian America in the geographies — a country of 
which Russia herself knew little, and with which she 
did little. She disposed of it at the earliest opportu- 
nity to the United States for the sum of about seven 
millions of dollars. William H. Seward, the war Sec- 
retary of State, was then in office. The contract was 
ratified and no particular criticism of this remarkable 
purchase was ever made, and Alaska has long since 
paid back far more than her cost, which was not more 
than a few cents an acre for all her vast territory.* 
Yet we did not need her, and the transaction remains 
one of the secrets of American diplomacy. Probably 
a friendly negotiation with the huge European oli- 
garchy who has, strangel}^ enough, always been our 
friend, was the only secret. 

One singular thing was accomplished that is not 
often mentioned. The saying that "on her dominion 
the sun never sets ' ' is not true of England alone. 
When the rays fall at sunset on Oumnak, the far- 
western islet of the long Aleutian chain, they at the 

"^ Above $30,000,000 of gold had been taken out of Alaska previous to the 
Klondike find. 



THE NEW GOLD EI ELDS OE A/..lSk'A. <) 

same moment light with the risiug dawn that point 
of Maine which juts into the Bay of Fundy, and in 
his course the sun lights for us one continuous coun- 
try, lacking only that narrow strip of territory which 
lies on the west coast of British Columbia where 
Canada runs to the sea. 

Alaska was almost unknown at the time of its 
purchase, and is but little b,etter known now. Any 
new feature or product necessarily is a new discov- 
ery. In articles in the latest enc3xlopaedias one will 
not find gold mentioned as one of the products. It 
is the home of wandering tribes, Indians and Esqui- 
maux, and in all the vast interior and northern part 
there are supposed to be only about fifteen thousand 
even of these savages. They are said also to be dying 
off, though there were two years ago not twice that 
niimber of v>rhite people to take what they might 
leave in the way of territory. 

It is to our ideas, and notwithstanding the im- 
mense territory to whose contrasts we have been long 
accustomed, a strange country. Its coast-line is 
nearly eight thousand miles long — larger than the 
entire Atlantic coast of the United States. From 
north to south the extreme length of the territory is 
eleven hundred miles. From east to west it is eight 
hundred miles. Its area is 514,700 square miles. A 
glance at the map shows a queerly shaped territory. 
An arm of it runs southward in a long " panhandle" 
about six hundred miles long and of an average width 
of fifty miles. This was the form of the Russian 



10 THE k'l.ONDIKE. 

possession before we acquired it, and an equally nar- 
row strip off of the west coast of British Columbia, 
extending southward, would give us continuous terri- 
tory up to, and including, all Alaska. It is the soli- 
tary instance of our possessions not touching each 
other throughout their extent. 

And in certain respects the climate is strange. It 
is far north, and is expected to be, and is, extremely 
cold. Its southern boundary is the sixtieth degree of 
north latitude, and the arctic circle passes through its 
northern half. Yet the climate of the southwestern 
part is fairly warm, and it is the rainiest country in 
the world. This is owing to the warm current of the 
Pacific, sometimes called the Kiro-Siwo, or Japanese 
current. There is much rain, a short summer and 
little heat. The cereal crops will grow, but they will 
not mature. Alaska will never be a farming country.* 

But it has certain other natural resources. For- 
ests, fish and furs are, and probably will always be, 
abundant. In the streams the salmon in the season 
almost fill the current and climb over each other. 
Fur-bearing animals abound. There are regions 
where the bears are so numerous that the Indians 
and whites alike find it more agreeable to let them 
have almost exclusive possession. In these parts 
salmon is the chief subsistence of the beans as well as 
of the people, the latter catching a year's supply while 
the fish run, and the bears finding a scanty subsist- 
ence the rest of the time, eked out by a long sleep in 

* This has been always said, and until recently always believed. It is 
now disputed. See remarks of Prof. Jack.son, in Supplement. 



THE NEW GOLD FIELDS OF ALASKA. 11 

winter. On the coast there is cod-fishing as good as 
it is on the Newfoundland banks. Not far off the 
coast are the Prybilof seal islands, which, with others, 
have been the cause of much contention between our 
government and that of Great Britain. 

Just where Alaska begins to jut out from the main 
continent, and form a huge square indented cape 
stretching westward until it almost touches Asia, and 
at about the 140th meridian of west longitude, is the 
Canadian boundary-line. The Yukon, the great 
northwestern river, a mile wide six hundred miles 
from the coast, rises in this British territory, its 
two branches, Pelly river and the Porcupine, joining 
each other in eastern Alaska and running westward 
through the country as the Yukon a distance of about 
2,800 miles to the western coast. 

Circle City, Alaska, appears now on all maps, and 
is convenient as a reference. It is an American set- 
tlement near the boundary line. It is at least fifteen 
hundred miles from the river's mouth. Beyond it 
still, some three hundred miles up the stream and 
across the line, the little river called the Reindeer 
runs into the Yukon, or Pelly, as an affluent, and 
this is now the place so much heard of called Klon- 
dike, or "The Klondike," where the alleged richest 
placer gold fields in the world lie. 

Since this name and place are now attracting an 
attention almost universal, let us try to form some idea 
of distances. It is the longest and hardest road ever 
traveled for gold. The usual route is from San 



12 THE KLONDIKE. 

Francisco to Seattle first, if one starts from the former 
place. Then nearly west from Seattle to the opening 
in the Aleutians at Ounimak. Thence northeast to 
St. Michaels. All this is a journey of at least five 
thousand miles. Up the river to the "diggings" is 
another seventeen hundred miles in round numbers ; 
six thousand five hundred miles of travel at least 
from San Francisco. 

It is useless to describe here the means of transpor- 
tation. A few steamers that were until recently en- 
gaged in the northern business will now be increased 
in number to meet the demand. The navigation of 
the Yukon is closed by the end of September. Seattle 
will be crowded all winter with people who have 
started too late, but who wish to go by the earliest 
steamer of the spring of '98. The northern business 
has been until the extraordinary late demand arose, in 
the hands of a few men ; the North American Trans- 
portation and Trading Company being most exten- 
sively in the business. Besides the boats used in the 
traffic it owns the stores along the Yukon river. Its 
principal business is the sale of supplies to the people 
it has carried thither, and it has had practically a 
monopoly. The charge has been $165.00 for the pas- 
sage, with 150 pounds of baggage from Seattle to the 
upper waters of the Yukon. They feed the passenger 
on the way, but have not allowed him to carry any 
supplies for his own use. These supplies must be 
obtained from the company's agents. They can either 
be bought as wanted or contracted for beforehand. 
Wiien bought as wanted it is manifest that prices may 



THE .\'R\V COLD FIELDS OF AL. ISEA. 13 

be higher or lower according to demands and scarcity, 
and there may not be enough to go round at all. For 
four hundred dollars cash in advance this company 
has been in the habit of guaranteeing a year's subsist- 
ence. For the winter of 1897-98, though efforts have 
been made to get an immense supply of necessaries 
up the Yukon, there are those who think there is not 
enough, and that enough cannot be provided with all 
the facilities of transportation now at hand to meet 
the probable demand at any price. 

With the spring of 1898 must come an end to this 
arrangement, so far at least as any monopoly of the 
business is concerned. It is natural for prudent men 
to wish to supply themselves, and find transportation 
for these supplies. A pressing demand brings com- 
petition always. With a certainty of this fact before 
him one who contemplates going to the Klondike 
will remember two things; that it is a journey that 
cannot be made in winter, and late in the summer 
means winter ; that present facilities for the long 
journey are entirely inadequate, and will be increased 
and changed with inevitable certainty if the demand 
continues. Add to this conclusion another fact. If 
the demand does 7iot continue it will be a very fortu- 
nate thing that any man who wanted to go did not 
succeed. It will mean a failure of the gold pros- 
pects. 

A glance at the map will show the other route to 
the Klondike. This route is from Seattle north to 
Sitka along the coast. From Sitka northward it is 



14 THE KLONDIKE. 

through the bays and inlets of that coast to Juneau. 
From Juneau to the head waters of the sound, where 
there is a settlement, and near which Chilkoot Pass 
opens to the southward. All this is on United States 
territory, but the British boundary line runs across 
the mouth of the pass, roughly speaking, and the 
remaining six hundred and seventy-eight miles of 
the roughest mountain journey conceivable are on 
British soil. From Seattle to the diggings is about 
1,678 miles. 

But a few months ago Chilkoot Pass was known, or 
had been traveled, by a very few men. Wagons are 
as yet impossible. Travelers must use pack-ponies 
or dogs and their own backs. The hardiest of north- 
ern woodmen and hunters could make such a journey, 
where the average man must leave his bones. 

But the ** overland " route is being investigated, 
and discoveries will follow as they always do. Time 
was when General Fremont was commissioned to find 
paths across the mountains that have now long been 
familiar, and when they began to be used the Panama 
route to the Pacific was abandoned. So it will be 
with the land-passage to the frozen north if the in- 
ducement remains long enough. Two other passes 
are now known besides the first-named, one of which 
is the White Pass. Any of them involve a land journey 
of six hundred miles. A man can take as much with 
him as he wishes, but wishes do not govern. Indian 
guides charge, it is said, a dollar a pound for carrying 
goods across the mountain streams. Any kind of a 
carrying outfit requires a large expenditure of money. 




IN CHILKOOT PASS. 



16 THE KLONDIKE. 

and this outfit must consist either of dogs or ponies. 
Strangely enough, the dog-sledge is preferred. 

Transportation is so precious that a man who can- 
not carry a load on his back weighing fifty pounds 
might better not start, because an emergency may 
arise at any time that would deprive him of all other 
means of carrying the absolute necessities of life. 

Every new enterprise is marked by innumerable 
mistakes. All inexperienced miners load themselves 
with things they afterwards throw away. For such a 
journey the most primitive necessities of life only can 
be carried, and for such a country as Alaska all we 
mean by the word "clothing" in civilized life must 
be cast aside. Underwear is made of heavy blanket 
flannel. Coarse, strong trousers, the heaviest and 
most durable made, must be worn. Foot-wear must 
be coarse, heavy and strong. The coat .should be a 
pea jacket. A " slicker," by which is meant a water- 
proof coat, should be carried. The fur-lined sleeping 
bag of the artic regions is a necessity. A few tin 
pans and cups, and a frying-pan and coffee-pot, con- 
stitute the cooking vessels. A pick and a long- 
handled spade are the chief needed tools. To go 
loaded with fire arras is foolish, though one rifle to a 
party, and a good revolver per man, is not super- 
fluous. 

When the scene is reached the first essential is a 
shelter of some kind. In the summer a tent will an- 
swer, but there is little summer, and among the first 
tasks is that of preparing a place for winter. When 
timber for building a log-house is scarce the on]y 



THE NEW GOLD FIELDS OF ALASKA. 17 

resource is a "dug-out" excavated in the side of a 
hill and well drained. It is in any event a struggle for 
life agains the rigors of an artic winter. 

It must be remembered that nothing to eat can 
be grown there. The brief summer does not bring 
relief from famine. For all lime to come common 
necessities must be imported. The salmon with which 
the streams abound in the running season are not 
good human food for any but Indians. The fur- 
bearing animals are as a rule not eatable. 

Hop^, haste and imagination will carry many a 
man off his feet in this new excitement. It must be 
remembered that the road is the farthest, longest and 
hardest ever traveled for gold, and that the country, 
when reached, is probably hopeless for any other pur- 
pose than mining. The climate is appalling when 
met under any but the most favorable conditions of 
health, courage and resources. 

And a word further as to the {particulars of this cli- 
mate of an unknoA^n country. To go there is equiv- 
alent to entering within the arctic circle. Eight 
months in the year the world there is in the relentless 
grasp of frost. During the winter of 1896-97 the 
mercury was at times seventy degrees below zert), and 
often it falls to ninety. The ground freezes to a depth 
of fifteen feet or more. Streams are locked fast in an 
embrace that dynamite could not sunder. Vast fields 
of snow cover the arctic scene. It is a mountainous 
land, over which roads in winter are quite impassable. 
Plenty to eat of oily food, plenty to wear of the 
thickest kind, and a house into which tht bitter, still. 



18 



rilE KLONDIKE. 



numbing cold cannot enter, are absolute necessities. 
Summer, so called, is a season of melting snows, 
slush, mud, and sometimes there may be a day of 
intense humid heat. None of these things will deter 
humanity when gold is the stake, but not to know, 
or to undervalue the conditions, will be suicide to 
many an adventurer. 




CHAPTER III. 

GOLD MINKS AND MINING. 

Old men remember the times of the California 
gold excitement. Except in placer mining there is 
hardly a single process used now that was the best 
that could be done in mining then, and even in dig- 
ging and washing free gold out of gravel, " pay-dirt," 
many of the minor processes have changed. 

But in respect to the finding and mining of gold, 
the vast majority of those who go to the Klondike 
will at first know almost absolutely nothing. Some 
of the more prudent and acute will try to find out as 
much as possible about it befote they start. The ma- 
jority will leave the farm and the shop and trust to 
luck. Some of these will be successful, as in the old 
Californian times, and as in those times, a man who 
has mined for years will go over the ground and find 
no "sign," though as eager as any one to make a 
"strike." A tenderfoot who knows nothing at all 
will come prodding and aimlessly digging over the 
same ground and "strike it rich." In all placer 
mining there enters the enticing and unfortunate ele- 
ment of chance. 

A word may be said here with regard to the plen- 
tifulness of free gold at places nearer home than the 
Klondike. The excitement is long ago over, and 
most people's attention has been occupied with the 

19 



20 THE KLONDIKE. 

idea of mining by machinery costing large sums, and 
the taking of gold in various combinations with other 
metals from lodes which lie imbedded in ledges of 
quartz. 

But there is still placer mining in the United States. 
When the careless and impatient California placer 
miner had worked out his claim and abandoned it, 
along came the Chinaman, and worked over all his 
" tailings," and, it has been often said, took out more 
gold than the original miner did. So in later times, 
ground that has been repeatedly gone over in the old 
days is still worked by later miners. Colorado is rich 
in placer mines. In 1897 the gold product of that 
state will be about $20,000,000, as against $16,500,- 
000, in 1896. In the low grade diggings there are 
many millions awaiting the expensive building of 
flumes and ditches. Immense placers in one locality 
in northern Colorado are estimated to contain $800,- 
000,000 in free gold, and a ditch forty miles long will 
open these fields. In southwestern Colorado there is 
a placer field a hundred miles in length. Clear Creek 
and Gilpin, almost in sight of Denver, which have 
been mined ever since the Pike's Peak excitement, are 
yielding more gold now every year than they ever did 
then. In California, in almost all the old fields, 
placer mining still goes on, and new diggings are con- 
stantly discovered. A glance at the figures show that 
the annual output is immense, and constantly increas- 
ing. But the excitement is gone. A miner goes 
steadily about his business in a civilized community. 
The climate is inviting instead of repellant. With im- 



THE NEW COLD FIELDS OF ALASKA. 21 

proved processes mining in these regions has become 
a business, not a speculation, and the charm is gone. 
Would it not be well for the reader who wants to 
go to Klondike to ask himself how much the love of 
adventure, and the instinct that courts chance and 
luck, is mixed up with his desires toward that new 
region ? 

There are unquestionably many hundreds of per- 
sons who are now thinking of the Klondike, and who 
are exceedingly anxious to try their fortunes there, 
whose only idea of gold is that it comes out of the 
ground, that it is dug for, and found, and is the direct 
representative of all values, got at first hands without 
waiting, and that in a week or a month one may be- 
come immensely rich. 

To some of these it may be interesting to know 
something of the long story of gold mining, of the 
various forms of that industry, and of the details 
accompanying the simplest modes of securing the 
mysterious yellow treasure that has a greater fascina- 
tion for the human eye than any other form of wealth. 

Gold is a metal that has been found almost every- 
where over the world, but always in limited quan- 
tities. It is, of course, in this limit of product that its 
value chiefly consists. There is even English gold. 
There is gold in eastern Siberia, opposite Alaska. 
It is found in most of the countries in Europe. 
Gypsies and poor people even now work the sands of 
the Rhine and the Danube for the small particles of 
gold found in them. In Austria, in the Tyrol, in 



22 THE KLONDIKE. 

Italy, in Hungary, there are gold mines. Carolina 
gold was once a well-known product in this country, 
though now few persons remember that gold was ever 
mined there. 

Every one of these places has in its day been the 
scene or source of an excitement, a *' gold-fever." 

All the mines from which was taken the gold of 
the earlier ages are now, so far as can be known, for- 
gotten. A very little of the yellow metal went as far 
then as a great deal does now. It was a little square, 
flat world in the common belief, in which were not 
included at all the very countries that have produced 
nearly all the gold of modern times. 

Gold is chiefly found in one or the other of two 
special forms. First, in mineral veins, usually quartz, 
and in that case generally associated with other 
metals, such as lead, silver, calcium, bismuth, the 
pyrytes, etc. Sometimes these admixtures are of 
great density and hardness. Often the gold found in 
connection with them is in very minute quantity. 
Most of the modern processes of mining have their 
uses in cheaper or more rapid ways of separating 
these metals, and getting out the gold, the silver, the 
lead, separately. Metallurgy is the highest branch 
of chemistry, and chemistry is the highest field of 
modern applied science. Most of the gold mines of 
today depend for their value upon scientific processes, 
constantly in the hands of experts. All the romance 
is taken away. Immense sums are invested in ma- 
chinery. Sometimes they pay largely, more often 
only moderately, and frequently they cease after a 



THE NEW COLD EI ELDS OE AL.lSE.l 2W 

while to pay at all. In the midst of uuusual excite- 
ment it is worth while to realize that even gold min- 
ing alwaj'S comes down at last to a business basis. 

The other form in which gold is found is that 
which alwa3'S first attracts the attention of mankind, 
and causes rushes to certain localities. It is where 
the dream of sudden wealth seems likely to be real- 
ized, and the dull yellow metal can be actually seen 
ard taken up in the hand — found, held, owned. 

This is placer mining. Placer is a Spanish word, 
pionounced properly pla .y^/r, and means literally 
pleasure; that is, plenty ot metal easily mined. We 
obtained the term when we got California, and pro- 
nounce it in our own way. The gold thus found is 
free gold, in "dust," nuggets, scales, filaments, 
lumps. The gravel in which it lies is called " pay- 
dirt." It came there by being ground by natural 
processes out of the quartz or other matrix in which 
nature placed it, and deposited in a more or less un- 
mixed and natural state amid the washings of the 
hills and mountains. Therefore placer diggings al- 
most always lie near streams or washes, or where 
there was once a stream, though it may have been so 
long ago that all traces of it are obliterated. The 
nature of the ground is alluvial. It came from some- 
where else. It bore with it in its movings these 
ground-out grains of gold. It is a heavy metal, and 
as it moved it gradually sank to the bottom of the 
mass. Often the gold lies at the very bottom of the 
gravel on the " bed rock," stopping there because it 
could sink no farther. When it has reached that 



f>4 THE KLONDtKE. 

resting-place a natural roughness or obstruction of the 
rock may intervene, and may have caused it to gather 
more thickly in one place than in another. This con- 
stitutes a placer field. When the gathering is in 
quantity unusual in one place the diggings are very 
rich, and many persons grow excited, and thousands 
of people want to go there at once. Free gold may be 
thinly scatttered over a large area. In this area 
there are usually rich spots from the causes men- 
tioned. "Prospecting" is a diligent looking for 
these spots. It is usually all underground. Sur- 
face indications show little or nothing except in 
streams. Hence the element — the fascinating and 
unfortunate element — of luck and chance. 

Placer mining has always been the boon of the 
poor man. At first, at least, machinery is not re- 
quired. He takes his find out of the sand by simple 
and crude home-made processes, and without melting, 
or refining, or chemicals, the only really 3'ellow metal 
in all nature is his, and just as he finds it it will buy 
anything this world has to sell. 

All the gold of ancient times ; the gold of the ves- 
sels of the temple, and of Solomon's treasures, and of 
the old Roman empire, was got by placer mining. 
The chemical processes, and the machinery, are all, so 
far as known, of modern invention. The}^ do what 
nature did when she made the placers ; they grind it 
out of the rock where it was placed in veins by an- 
cient melting and pressure processes, and reduce and 
refine and separate it. The miner who strikes it rich 
in placer diggings has had all this done for him by 



The new cold FiE/jys of .il,lsa\l 25 

nature without cost. TliivS illustrates briefly the two 
kinds of mining. 

Placer mines usually yield gold in the form of fine 
particles called "dust," but not always. The dig- 
gings at Klondike are so far remarkable in chiefly 
giving up their store in the form of flakes, scales, 
small pieces called " nuggets." Of the quantity 
usually yielded by placer diggings in proportion to the 
total amount of dirt washed, many erroneous ideas are 
held. In California in the flush times, and in the rich- 
est fields known up to that time, the average amount 
of gold found to every ton of dirt was about forty-five 
cents worth. In Australia at about the same time 
the yield was larger — about eighty to ninety cents 
being got out of an average ton. The stories from 
the Klondike exceed these modest figures so far, 
and it will be seen that fifty, a hundred, five hundred 
dollars to the pan (not the ton) are startling results. 
The opinion of old miners is that these finds are in 
reality pockets, limited in extent, unusual, and not to 
be counted upon as falling within the yield of the 
usual mining claim. They believe there is gold there, 
perhaps even in comparatively great plenty, but also 
that there are many fields in Alaska that will equal 
those of the Klondike in final general results, and 
that this general result will in a year or two come 
within the limits of the previous experience of man- 
kind. If not ; if the indications so far apply gener- 
ally ; then that the Almighty has reserved for these 
later times the richest gold-find of all history, and 



26 THE KLOXDIKE. 

fenced it in with all the terrors and perils of the arctic 
zone. 

In placer mining there are used certain tools and 
implements, the names of which are long since famil- 
iar, but the definite uses of which aie not so well 
understood. The miner's outfit is very simple. It 
means not so much costly and technical tools as very 
hard work and patience. 

As previously stated, the prime necessities are a 
pick and a shovel. There is always digging to be 
done, and after the digging comes the '* washing." 
This operation requires, at least in prospecting and 
first work, a ** pan." This is a circular dish of sheet 
iron — a com.mon tin wash-basin will answer — about 
thirteen or fourteen inches in diameter. It is filled 
about two-thirds full of dirt, and held in the running 
stream or in a hole filled with water. The miner 
usually picks out the larger stones by hand, and gives 
a peculiar motion compounded of a shake and a twist 
to the pan. He wants to keep the contents suspended 
in the stream of water, so that the lighter contents 
will wash out of the pan, while the heavier will sink 
to the bottom. Among these, black sand, iron ore, 
et-c., will be found the grains of gold. This washing 
is repeated until a quantity of the heavier stufi" is 
collected, and the gold that is in it is finally recovered 
by another careful washing in the pan, this last oper- 
ation being called "panning out." 

A "cradle " or "rocker" is a less familiar imple- 
ment. It is an oblong box with rockers on the bot- 



THE NEW GO/J) E/ELDS OE .IL.ISE. I. 27 

torn like a child's cradle. At one end is a movable 
hopper with a perforated sheet-iron bottom, and in 
this the dirt is placed. Water is poured on this, and 
the machine is rocked to and fro with an upright 
wooden handle. Below the hopper, and along the 
bottom of the box, are placed cross pieces of wood 
called "riffles." Beside these, as the cradle is rocked 




THE vSLUICE. 



and the water carries the dirt slowly along the slop- 
ing bottom of the box, the particles of gold collect. 

On the same principle, but of more extensive ca- 
pacity, is the "sluice." This is a longer box with 
riffles. They are often joined in series, and may ex- 
tend several hundred feet. A stream of water is in- 
troduced into the upper end, the dirt is cast in with a 



28 THE KLONDIKE. 

shovel, the riffles retard the streata so as to allow the 
heavier particles to settle against them, and finally 
there is a *' cleau-up " and a '* pan-out." 

The long-accustomed wealth of a Vanderbilt or 
Gould or Rockefeller may cease to charm. It be- 
comes usual. But to have the feeling of growing 
wealth come suddenly must make a moment in a 
man's life worth many days of toil. It is this that 
gives the charm to the placer mining industry. To 
work for the pan-out, to wait for its results, and at 
last to find it rich beyond compare ; this is the min- 
er's dream. And, as in the results of a lottery-draw- 
ing, it is the fortunate man alone who is known, and 
his success is heralded. Surely in all the mining ad- 
ventures of the world, the great majority have failed. 
It will be true also of the Klondike, though of these 
uncertainties and risks the world will never take 
warning, and it is a singular fact that the man who 
has spent his life in a mining country, and knows his 
own story and the story of a hundred other ragged 
millionaires, is the last of all to accept the warning of 
universal experience and oft-repeated failure. 

With these facts before them it is not singular that 
almost all miners believe in the existence, somewhere, 
of a " Mother Vein," the source of all the gold. But 
in all the world so far this great repository of untold 
riches has never been found. There may be many 
such mother veins ; there may be none at all. It may 
exist in a liquid state in the white-hot bowels of the 
earth, and from it in times long past may have been 
injected into the fissures of the cooling quartz all of it 



THE i\EW aOLl) FIELDS OF ALASKA. 



20 



that has ever been found, either ground out and 
washed down into the placer-fields, or clinging still to 
its original matrix. 

In connection with the Klondike fields they are 
again discussing the nearness of the mother- vein. 
It is among the dreams of men that there is even a 
renewed possibility of its being found. But no quartz 
veins have thus far been found near the place. The 
rich find has come from a distance and direction un- 
known, and whether down the streams from the north, 
or whether carried thither by glacial action, any theory 
built upon present known facts would indicate that 
the mysterious source of riches is, if it exists at all, 
possibly hidden beneath a garment of eternal ice that 
all the suns of the present creation will not melt. 




CHAPTER IV. 

THE ACTUAL CONDITIONS. 

Although many millions had been taken out of the 
purchase of Secretary Seward in the past few years, 
there was no hint of immense and unexampled min- 
eral wealth in the Alaskan region until late in the 
summer of 1896. Some weeks after the first find it 
was rumored locally that a strike had been made at 
Klondike, or Reindeer river, and Circle City and other 
camps begaa instantly to be deserted by their adven- 
turous inhabitants for the new diggings. 

The name, variously spelled, but now known to be 
Kloon Diuck, and Indian in its original meaning of 
"Fish river," or "plenty offish," has now taken 
permanent form as it stands. While all the charts 
speak of Reindeer river, they too were mistaken, for 
there were never any reindeer there to name it for, and 
will not be until the experiment of bringing them 
thither and propagating them as domestic animals 
fitted to such a region has further advanced. The 
dog has, however, been adopted as a draught- animal 
on American soil, and the reindeer will undoubtedly 
become in that region a common domestic animal 
within a brief time. To this slight degree at least 
our ideas have been changed by our Alaskan domain. 
Reindeer river is among the best salmon streams 
running into the Yukon. At every stream during the 



THE NEW aOLD FIELDS OF ALASKA. 31 

season some of the vast throug of fish turn aside, the 
main body going up the Yukon at the rate of about a 
hundred miles a day. Nevertheless, it is at its mouth 
a shallow stream, easily prospected. And it had been 
visited by miners, but they made no remarkable finds. 
It is believed that they did not linger to further inves- 
tigate because discouraged by the number of bears. 
A find of magnitude would have detained them not- 
withstanding, but the bears were there for salmon and 
the men for gold. One party found what they wanted 
and the other did not, and the intimate companionship 
of the two species has never been pleasant to either. 

But in the summer of 1896 a man named Carmack, 
now often spoken of as McCormick, was a resident 
"squaw-man," having allied himself with a woman 
of the Stick tribe some years before. He was a sal- 
mon-catcher, and not a miner ; and had been led to 
place his nets at the mouth of the Reindeer, known to 
him by its Indian name, as stated, which sounds to 
American ears as the name is now spelled and ac- 
cepted. 

Visits to the stream had given Carmack the idea 
of prospecting it for a chance find, and at about the 
time mentioned he, with some two or three Indian 
companions, started up the stream. Going up the 
Reindeer, or Klondike, they came to a considerable 
tributary coming in on the right. Here conditions 
seemed favorable for looking for gold, but they fol- 
lowed the smaller fork some twenty-five miles before 
they went ashore. 

The results of this unskillful prospecting by men 



32 THE KLONDIKE. 

who were not accustomed miners ; were to that fra- 
ternity tenderfeet in fact ; would almost have turned 
the head of a hardened veteran. For at a depth of 
only three feet Carmack found in the low bars beside 
the creek gravel that panned a dollar to the pound 
of dirt. Others have since found dirt near by that 
panned ten dollars to the pound — the richest find 
known in mining annals except the cases of the few 
huge "nuggets" of Australia and the Sacramento 
valley in California. 

Remote as this discovery was, and lone and silent 
as was the wilderness, it was not long a secret. Then 
happened the rush, first locally, resulting in the de- 
populating of Circle City and other camps, and later 
extending among mining men by word of mouth, 
finally including nearly every man who had gone 
north into that region before the discovery, with the 
general purpose only of seeing what he could find. 

At last the world at large was let into the secret 
by means that have been described. The stories of 
gold-finds are old. They occur frequently. Men pay 
little attention to them. It required the docking of 
of the battered Alaska steamer at San Francisco on 
July 14th, and the coming ashore of the men who 
wore upon their weather-beaten faces, and displayed 
in their clothing and their rude belongings, the fact 
that they were Argonauts ; returned adventurers from^ 
a strange land who had come laden with comparatively 
vast sums. 

Then over all the wires passed the news : " They 
were weatherbeaten and ragged, and looked like 



THE NEW CO LP EfELDS Oh' ALASKA. 'X\ 

tramps, but they brought with them nearly a million 
dollars in gold-dust washed from the sands of the most 
marvelous mining district the world has known. An 
average of $25,000 each was their record for a few 
months' exile in the far north." 

These were the words that were read by perhaps 
ten millions of persons before nine o'clock on 4:he fol- 
lowing morning. It was a statement of fact, and not 
an estimate, a rumor or a guess. And almost in- 
stantly thousands of those readers, knew that they 
themselves wanted to go to the Klondike. They knew 
nothing of the details, the climate, the scene, the 
journey, the cost, the toil, the uncertainty. These 
facts always come more slowly afterwards. Let us 
see what some of them are now. 

A lady teacher connected with a missionary enter- 
prise writes thus from Circle City, in a letter dated in 
February, 1897, and printed in a public journal : 

. . " We have had but three mails in the six 
months I have spent here, and if this letter does not 
leave inside of a month there will be no opportunity 
to send it out until next July. It took our last mail 
just three months to travel, with dog-team, over the 
nine hundred miles.from Juneau, Alaska— our nearest 
' civilized ' town— to Circle City." 

With reference to the two routes, mentioned in a 
preceding chapter, this writer says : 

"The miners prefer to reach the gold fields here 
by coming over this trail from Juneau, but I preferred 
to come all the way from Puget Sound by steamer ; 
up through the North Pacific and Bering Sea to the 



34 THE KLONDIKE. 

mouth of the Yukon river, and then fifteen hundred 
miles up the river — in all a two months' trip." 

She touches upon the personal experiences which 
seem small at a distance and are large in actual con- 
tact, and which show something, a good deal perhaps, 
of the actual conditions of the country and the 
journey. She says : 

"Steaming up the Yukon is interesting . . . . 
but whenever the boat stops to take on wood, to trade 
with the natives, or is laid up on the ever-present 
sand-bar, it is immediately taken possession of by 
these little pests (the mosquitoes) .... When 
the passengers see that the boat is about to stop a 
wild rush is made for the staterooms, and bags made 
of mosquito-netting or cheese-cloth are quickly drawn 
down over hat, head and shoulders." 

Referring to the strange effects of latitude she 
says : 

"During the shortest days we have but little more 

than two hours of daylight Lamps are 

lighted in the school-room at half-past one, and I go 
to school in the morning long before daylight." 

She refers to Circle City as " the largest log-house 
town in the world," to the strange ideas of Indians 
and half-breeds, and finally states certain facts about 
climate, thus : 

"This is an unusually mild winter (winter of 
1896-97) on the upper Yukon. Fifty-four degrees 
below zero is the coldest yet registered by the stand- 
ard thermometers, while the average has been twenty- 
eight below. It is a dry cold, with no wind or 



THE NEW GOLD E/ELDS OE ALASKA. :J5 

drifting snow until the present month. During the 
first part of the winter riding after a team of from 
four to twelve dogs was the principal amusement. 
But suddenly all our men got the Klondike fever, 
and dogs became too valuable to be used as play- 
things. Where a man can take a pan and wash out 
twenty-five dollars worth of gold-dust in ten minutes, 
no wonder those who hear of it get the fever. It is a 
common sight to see a man and a dog harnessed to- 
gether to a sled loaded with provisions and blankets, 
and starting out on the two-hundred-and forty mile 
tramp through the snow and cold to Klondike. A 
hundred dollars is a small price to pay for a poor, 
wolfish-looking dog. Some Indians rent their dogs, 

getting a dollar a day for each Now 

that the dogs are gone some of us have taken to snow- 
shoes for exercise. The web snowshoes, and not the 

Norwegian 'ski' are used here " 

As has been shown by comparative statements 
gathered from statistics, the gold-find of the Klon- 
dike is of incomparable richness. But the strange- 
ness of the circumstances does not end here. The 
attractive wealth is found under peculiar mining con- 
ditions. The ground freezes to a depth of sixteen to 
eighteen feet. It is a bleak, barren, mountainous 
land, the shores of the Yukon from Circle City up 
being especially rugged. Southwestern and southern 
Alaska are forest countries ; in the Klondike region, 
above the log-house metropolis, timber is scarce. The 
gold-bearing gravel does not lie on the surface, and 
the first thing to do is to sink a well through the 



m THE KLONDIKE. 

overlying earth down to the gravel. In the earlier 
finds the wells were sunk only about three feet. But 
richer finds afterwards made were found at a depth of 
twelve to eighteen feet. 

The brief summer sun never thaws the ground 
entirely more than a few inches below the surface, 
and the extreme cold of the quick-coming winter re- 
freezes only a thin layer. To sink a well, or shaft, a 
fire is first built on the ground, and kept burning 
many hours. Then, in the partially softened earth 
the shaft is sunk. When the gravel, the pay-dirt, is 
reached, it is taken out and piled in the open air, no 
attempt being made to wash it ; except perhaps the 
washing of a i^sN panfuls to ascertain if it be worth 
while to continue the digging ; until the thaw of the 
coming summer shall have fiurnished water for the 
sluices or cradles. The washing and panning out 
must necessarily be done during the brief summer, 
though where, after the gravel Is reached, it can be 
worked by tunneling laterally from the shaft, it is 
possible, of course, to work eighteen feet under 
ground and below the frosts, even in the arctic mid- 
winter, and continue to take out gravel beneath or in 
the frozen ground. Still, the hoisting would necessi- 
tate work out-of doors at the surface, and the very 
little we know of real cold throughout the United 
States is still sufficient to cause us to believe that a 
man cannot labor in a temperature of .sixty to eight}' 
degrees below zero. It will be safe, at least for the 
present, to regard the mining season in Alaska as 
consisting of not more than one hundred days in a 



THE NEW GOLD EI ELDS OE ALASKA. \M 

year. If ever it grows longer it will be through arti- 
ficial appliances in the way of shelter which now 
seem impossible. 




MAN-AND-DOG TEAM. 



38 THE KLONDIKE. 

When, under the most favorable circumstances, the 
gravel is lilted out, it is in frozen masses unless found 
at a depth of about eighteen feet or more, and resem- 
bles broken concrete. A man who strikes pay-dirt at 
a distance from the surface less than this has the 
pleasure of picking and shoveling in frozen earth all 
the time, winter or summer. Water to use in pans 
and sluices is, for the same reason, impossible during 
three-fourths of the year, because it is all frozen. 
There is only one advantage. The gold found is all 
called "dust," but little or none of it is really that 
ac the Klondike. It is found in nuggets and flakes 
that can be often picked out with the fingers to a large 
extent. Only a few of these, of course, need be found 
to make the diggings pay, but the dirt is all usually 
washed. There is no sign of volcanic action, no com- 
mingling of the gold with other metals as is usually 
the case. If the gold is there at all it is unmistak- 
able — dull yellow, visible to a large extent, and almost 
of refinery purity. 

Even the pay-dirt differs from other gold-bearing 
gravel. It is of an almost inky blackness. It lies 
there upon the bed-rock, unlike anything that can 
anywhere be found on the surface. It does not be- 
long there, and came from a distance and place un- 
known — a place which, if a man should find it, would 
make him the richest person the world has ever 
known. 

It requires sixty-two Troy ounces of gold of the 
usual fineness of dust or nuggets to make the value of 
ope thousand dollars. A pan of dirt weighs about 



THE NEW GOLP El EL PS OE ALASKA. W.) 

twenty-five pounds. It has been told and believed 
that this sum has been frequently washed from a single 
panful. If this is true it means that that there is dirt 
at Klondike about one-sixth of whose mass by weight 
is gold. If it is true ever}^ reader of these lines should 
understand that such instances are like those of find- 
ing some one of the great nuggets of California and 
Australian history, at least one of which, in a solid 
lump, was worth twenty thousand dollars. Those of 
a bigness making them worth two to five thousand 
dollars have been found in perhaps two score in- 
stances. But the world understands that such finds 
do not indicate even the general richness of a placer 
field. In scattered nuggets and lumps and flakes in a 
panful, the case is different and yet the same. 

But many tales have reached civilization that 
come within the verge of belief without a call upon 
credulity. So far as the present excitement is con- 
cerned they apply to the Klondike fields alone. 
Stories of from twenty-five to one hundred dollars to 
the pan are common. Immense sums have already 
been brought from there without any question — sums 
at least that are immense when considered in relation 
to the small number of men who thus far have 
worked that field during one brief summer. For the 
interest that now prevails there is full and justifiable 
cause, though all the facts may mean when sifted sim- 
ply this ; that a new and rich gold field of unknown 
extent and undefined limits has been discovered ; that 
it is so far as known a placer-field, or poor man's min- 
ing ground; that the region in which it lies is new to 







FROZEN PAY DIRT. 



TfTI'. XFAV GOr.n FT ELDS OF . JL.lSk'.l. 11 

the mining world in all its conditions, and tliat it is a 
field difficnlt in the extreme. 

Yet if you ask a man who knew the difficulties 
and was a partaker in the hardships of 'Forty-nine, you 
will find him smilling at all the perils and hardships 
of Alaska save one — the eternal cold. 

The road he traveled in his time to reach the 
scene of his dreams and hopes was as difficult as this. 
If every convenience and necessity of human life is 
wanting now at Klondike, so were they in early Cali- 
fornia. If youth and strength and courage con- 
quered then, they will conquer now. 

The climate of California, and outdoor life and 
work, saved many a puny life, and gave a lease upon 
length of days and pleasant memories. The climate 
of Alaska is equally sure — to kill. The scarcity and 
price of lumber, the difficulties of transportation, the 
rude methods of life, the absence of statute law, the 
forlorn need of woman and home — all these have 
their remedy in time and the instincts of the Saxon 
race. That which is offered for consideration by 
whomsoever wants to go for gold now is something 
time and energy and race-instincts cannot remedy. 
Let us be plain. It is something no sane man will 
risk or undertake save for one great stake — gold. 
It is in that light that the question should be consid- 
ered. 



CHAPTER V. 

PROSPECTS AND CONCLUSIONS. 

It is in a sense absurd that the name " Klondike," 
should be imagined to include all, or even a very con- 
siderable part, of the mining territory of an immense 
country. The visit of Carmack to his future fortune 
was in a sense a mere accident. Glacial, volcanic, or 
other geological action does not take place in a limited 
territory, and it is a conceded fact that the gold-bear- 
ing gravel found at Klondike does not belong to the 
region by original and undisturbed deposit. 

Many times since the news of the extraordinary 
find went to the world it has been mentioned that 
there were scores of tributaries, large and small, run- 
ning into the great valley of the Yukon. There exists 
no reason why some of them, many of them, may not 
have borne down and .spread out and deposited in ages 
past the same strange black gravel, bearing in greater 
or less richness, the alluring grains of gold.* 



*The theory of a Mother Lode intrudes itself upon all theories 
If glaciers wore away the lode by grinding, they may have carried it all 
downward in their course so that nothing is left of the mother lode. 
If water alone did it, the process was niore gradual, but may be fully as 
complete. But it is not likely that in either case the action was limited. 
We must regard the Klondike as an instance merely, and that a repetition 
of that case is very likely to be found. If it should be repeated elsewhere 
mankind will be likely to conclude that all the gold discoveries of the past 
are unimportant by comparison. 

42 



THE NEW GOLD FIELDS OF ALASKA. A\\ 

The Klondike fields lie without question in the 
Dominion of Canada. There is no question of the 
prompt action of that government with respect to 
revenue. Almost all the miners are Americans. 
They come, take and carry away — as indeed foreign 
miners have always done in this country — without 
paying tax or royalty of any description to a country 
jealous and exacting in proportion to the physical 
size of her civilization, and with a large national debt. 
Measures have already been taken that must result 
either in disturbance more or less prolonged, or in 
taxation submitted to and then retaliated against, or 
in rejection by the miners with displays of hostility in 
various forms. 

There is not intended here any prophesy of polit- 
ical changes or new boundary lines, though it is use- 
less to deny that if the Klondike region during the 
coming summer continues to yield in anything like 
the richness so far shown, the chance of decided action 
in resistance of Canadian revenue measures do not 
grow small with the prospect. 

Rather, attention is meant to be called to the fact 
that gold mining is most undoubtedly not confined to 
the Klondike. 

All the lodes of the British possessions which lie 
east of the boundary seem to lead into Alaska. The 
Pelly and the Lewis or Porcupine rivers make the 
Yukon, joining in eastern Alaska after rising in 
British territory, and wherever the tributaries of those 
streams have been prospected gold in greater or lesser 
quantities has been found ; Forty-Mile creek, Sixty- 



44 THE KLONDIKE. 

Mile creek and Birch creek for instances. The remote 
headwaters of all these streams are in the same group 
of mountains, the area of which is perhaps a thou- 
sand miles. This group is almost entirely unex- 
plored ; its comparatively minute features are not 
known. It lies largely within the territory of the 
United States, and is probably all yet to be found 
rich in gold. The country farther north belongs to 
the same mountain range. It is entirely likely that 
the Klondike is only one instance, and it is certain 
that after late developments there, there is no accessi- 
ble spot in Alaska that will remain long unknown. 

The Yukon valley is one of the most desolate coun- 
tries on earth. Even the natives avoid it and perma- 
nently live in it only in small numbers. The run- 
ning salmon is its only certain dependence. It will 
be very fortunate if gold in richness half as great as 
that of the Klondike can be found elsewhere in a less 
desolate region. It will in reality pay better, and it 
is now almost a necessity that if such places exist 
they shall be found. It must be seen upon reflection 
that one stream on the upper Yukon cannot contain 
room for the claims even of those who are already on 
the way, waiting at Seattle or elsewhere, and destined 
to swarm over that limited territory at the earliest 
possible moment during the coming j^ear. 

H. C. Mcintosh is governor of the British North- 
West Territory. On a visit to Seattle he is reported 
to have made for publication the following statement 
in regard to the gold future of that inimense country, 
including Alaska. He said : ■ ^^^^i^J'^'^f^^^' •' 



THE NEW GOLD EI ELDS OE . IL.ISKA. 4.') 

" We are only on the threshold of the greatest dis- 
covery ever made. Gold has been piling up in all 
these innumerable streams for hundreds of years. 
Much of the territory the foot of man has never trod. 
It would hardly be possible for one to exaggerate the 
richness, not only of the Klondike, but of other dis- 
tricts in the Canadian Yukon. At the same time the 
folly of thousands rushing in there without proper 
means of subsistence and utter ignorance of geograph- 
ical conditions of the country should be kept ever in 
mind. 

"There are fully nine thousand miles of these 
golden waterways in the region of the Yukon. Riv- 
ers, creeks and streams of every size and description 
are all rich in gold. I derived this knowledge from 
many old Hudson Bay explorers, who assured me 
that they considered the gold next to inexhaustible. 

** In 1894 I made a report to Sir John Thompson, 
then premier of Canada, who died the same year, 
strongly urging that a body of Canadian police be 
established on the river to maintain order. This was 
done in 1895, ^^^^ the British outpost of Fort Cudahy 
was found. 

"I have known gold to exist there since 1889, 
consequent upon a report made to be by W. O'Gilvie, 
the government explorer. Many streams that will no 
doubt prove to be as rich as the Klondike have not 
been explored or prospected. Among these I might 
mention Dominion creek, Hootalinqua river, Stewart 
river, Liard river and a score of other streams com- 
paratively unknown." 



46 THE KLONDIKE. 

Some scientific men who have visited and partly 
explored the country give it as their opinion — and 
most of them under the present pressure have given 
their views to the public— that the gold-bearing 
gravel was carried to its present known place by 
glacial action, and not by river current. One of these, 
Dr. Everett, a mining expert, says that the summer 
of the region is worse than the winter, and that the 
general effect of the climate upon the average resi- 
dent of the temperate zone is such that two years is as 
much as can be endured. There are, however, state- 
ments to the contrary. He also says that what min- 
ers there now regard as bed-rock, upon which the 
gold-bearing gravel rests, is a false bed-rock, and that 
underneath there is still another bed rock, with 
larger lumps of gold than are found on the first. He 
says that the country in the interior, back of the 
Klondike, will furnish enormous quantities of gold, 
and the finds already made are but a small beginning. 
The district, Dr. Everett thinks, will prove to be 
about three hundred miles square — about one thou- 
sand square miles. 

During these summer months, even at the moment 
of this writing, search is making for new trails and 
passes by the overland route from Seattle to Juneau 
and northward — a route that by latest accounts is 
in round numbers about one-half the distance as com- 
pared with the sea and Yukon journey. An advan- 
tage found in it is that a man may carry what he 
pleases and is able to. The White Pass, at first men- 
tioned merely as a possibility among three, is now 



THE NEW aO/.n El hi. /IS or . \f.ASk'A. 47 

being used by an unknown number of hardy men 
whose education in mountain climbing has been 
acquired in the past thirty years in our own west. 
The distance to the Klondike from the head of the 
sound overland is about seven hundred miles — much 
less than that started upon without hesitation thirty- 
five years ago, from the western edge of the plains to 
California. 

It may be said that so far as the Klondike is con- 
cerned work after September fifteenth must be post- 
poned for at least eight months, and that prospecting 
in the winter is impossible. As has been stated, 
the Klondike river has been already staked for a 
distance of about thirty miles, and it is known that 
by winter at least five thousand additional people 
will have entered that valley besides those who must 
wait. No fortune can be made this year, no matter 
how near it may lie. A man does not go for the 
purpose of working for somebody else ; he wants to 
work his own claim. He must find one, and it must 
pay. 

Common sense shows that this year's work is over, 
but another year is coming — a year in which the 
Klondike may fade into insignificance, and other and 
wider fields may be the objects of the journey. The 
public disposition is to be there in time to take advan- 
tage of the first developments that must occur unless 
the present excitement is destined to die oi|t and all 
who are there, or who go, will be glad to return if 
they survive. 



48 THE KLONDIKE. 

But there is a feature of all mining history that 
ought to be remembered, and yet which never is. It 
has periods. The first is that of excitement and wild 
haste, of abandoning claims and taking up others, of 
an entire want of persistence. The idea is that min- 
ing is a gamble, and not an industry. 

Nevertheless, if there is a mining future for Alaska 
it must come through persistent work, for that is true 
of every mining countr3^ The man who finally wins 
is he who, having found a claim that is good, that it 
pays to work, sticks to it. Want of occupation is 
the form that poverty and despair have taken in these 
United States now these six years. A wild rushing 
from diggings to diggings in Alaska and the British 
possessions will not help this persistent situation at 
home. 

It is certain that no power on earth can put a 
pause upon the tide that is now setting northward. 
Under the spur of necessity in thousands of cases, 
conservatism and calm judgment are put aside. Of 
the thousands who will go, a large proportion will 
reach the fields, and of those a few — comparatively a 
very few — will return with shining rewards. Disap- 
pointment awaits the many in Alaska as elsewhere. 
It is a long, and perilous, and costly journey at best. 
How infinitely better it would be before starting at all 
to fix in the mind the idea that fair success is better 
than none at all, and that it is persistency, not luck, 
that finally wins, in mining as in all things else. 

The present condition of the mining laws of the 
Dominion of Canada constitute an item of interest. 



THE NEW (;OLD FIELDS Ol' ALASKA. AW 

Duties have always been collected under those 
laws wherever the means was at hand for so coUlect- 
ing. A miner's personal property is subject to this 
tariff, including his kit of tools. 

Early in July the question of excluding foreign 
miners entirely was debated, but that measure was not 
taken. 

But on July 27th a measure was adopted by the 
Canadian Council at Ottawa which is now the law. 
Under this regulation a royalty is levied upon all the 
products of placer claims in Dominion territory, no 
matter by whom held or worked. This royalty is ten 
per centum upon all amounts taken out of any one 
claim up to five hundred dollars a week. Claims 
paying any returns less than that sum per week must 
pay a royalty of twenty per centum. 

In addition to this every alternate claim is reserved 
as the property of the Government, and must not be 
occupied or worked by individuals. 

In these provisions no distinction is made between 
Canadians and citizens of other countries. 

Measures have been taken to strengthen and 
largely augment the Canadian constabulary at and 
near the gold fields, and to collect the revenue that 
may fall due under the law mentioned, and from the 
imports of new arrivals. A system of overseeing 
the working of every claim, so as to prevent avoidance 
or concealment of the values taken out, must neces- 
sarily follow. 

Every American or other miner not a Canadian 
should remember that the Dominion has a right to 



50 THE KLONDIKE. 

make these or any other regulations in her own terri- 
tory. 

The idea that there is any disputed territory, or 
boundary line, north of Mt. St. Elias is a mistake. 
The undecided line is far south of the Klondike, and 
refers to a portion of the panhandle of Alaska. Dyea 
is now said to be in the disputed territory. 

The mining laws of the United States are embod- 
ied in the following brief of the statutes bearing upon 
that subject. 

The term "placer claim," as defined by the su- 
preme court of the United States, is: "Ground 
within defined boundaries which contains mineral in 
its earth, sand or gravel ; ground that includes valu- 
able deposits not in place, that is, not fixed in rock, 
but which are in a loose state, and may in most cases 
be collected by washing or amalgamation without 
milling." 

The manner of locating placer mining claims dif- 
fers from that of locating claims upon veins or lodes. 
In locating a vein or lode claim, the United States 
statutes provide that no claim shall extend more than 
300 feet on each side of the middle of the vein at the 
surface, and that no claim shall be limited by mining 
regulations to less than 25 feet on each side of the 
middle of the vein at the surface. In locating claims 
called "placers," however, the law provides that no 
location of such claim upon surveyed lands shall in- 
clude more than twenty acres for each individual 
claimant. The supreme court, however, has held 



THE NEW COLD FIELDS OF ALASKA. •^ 

that one individual can hold as many locations as he 
can purchase and rely upon his possessory title taht ; 
a separate patent for each location is unnecessary. 

Locaters, however, have to show proof of citizen- 
ship or intention to become citizens. This may be 
done in the case of an individual by his own affidavit; 
in the case of an association incorporated by a num- 
ber individuals by the affidavit of their authorized 
agent, made on his own knowledge or upon informa- 
tion and belief ; and in the case of a company organ- 
ized under the laws of any state or territory, by the 
filling of a certified copy of the charter or certificate 
of incorporation. 

A patent for any land claimed and located may be 
obtained in the following manner: "Any person, 
association or corporation authorized to locate a claim, 
having claimed and located a piece of land, and who 
has or have complied with the terms of the law, may 
file in the proper land office an application for a patent 
under oath, showing such compliance, together with 
a plat and field notes of the claim or claims in com- 
mon made by or under the direction of the United 
States surveyor general, showing accurately the 
boundaries of the claim or claims, which shall be 
distinctly marked by monuments on the ground, and 
shall post a copy of such plat, together with a notice 
of such application for a patent, in a conspicuous place 
on the land embraced in such plat, previous to the 
application for a patent on such plat ; and shall file an 
affidavit of at least two persons that such notice has 
been duly posted, and shall file a copy of the notice in 



52 THE KLONDIKE. 

such land office ; and shall thereupon be entitled to a 
patent to the land in the manner following : The regis- 
trar of said land office upon the filing of such applica- 
tion, plat, field notes, notices and affidavits, shall 
publish a notice that such application has been made, 
for a period of sixty da3^s, in a newspaper to be by him 
designated, as published nearest to such claim ; and 
shall post such notice in his office for the same period. 
The claimant at the time of filing such application, or 
at any time thereafter, within sixty days of publication, 
shall file with the registrar a certificate of the United 
States surveyor general that $500 worth of labor has 
been expended or improvements made upon the claim 
by himself or grantors ; that the plat is correct, with 
such further description by reference to natural objects 
or permanent monuments as shall identify the claim 
and furnish an accurate description to be incorporated 
in the patent. At the expiration of the sixty days of 
publication, the claimant shall file his affidavit show- 
ing that the plat and notice have been posted in a con- 
spicuous place on the claim during such period of 
publication." 

If no adverse claim shall have been filed with the 
registrar of the land office at the expiration of said sixty 
days, the claimant is entitled to a patent upon the pa}^- 
ment to the proper officer of $5 per acre in the case of 
a lode claim, and $2.50 per acre for a placer. 

The location of a placer claim and keeping posses- 
sion thereof until a patent shall be issued are subject 
to local laws and customs. 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 

ToPOGRAi'iiY OF TiiK KLONDIKE. — The actiuil 
topography of the Klondike diggings may interest 
many persons. The map below shows this in outline. 
While the Klondike — named on all charts Reindeer 
river — is an affluent of the Yukon, the stream itself 
is not worked, and the gold has so far been found in 
smaller streams running into it ; as the Bonanza, 
Bear creek, Twelve-Mile creek, etc. The direction of 
the Yukon as shown is not the general course of that 
river, but a bend to the southward where the Klon- 
dike enters. The map is a mere outline drawn by a 
miner, serving mainly to show how extensive the 
locations are on the tributaries of the Klondike, on 
those of Indian river, and on Hunker creek and else- 
where. 

It seems at least to illustrate the fact that it will 
be necessary, as remarked in a previous chapter, to 
find new diggings for the largely increased mining 
population which will appear on the ground in the 
summer of 1898. It is recommended to all who go to 
bear this fact in mind, and for reasons also heretofore 
given, to find locations if possible west of the bound- 
ary line and on American soil. 

The Question of Location. — Bearing upon this 
question of location is the opinion of General DufTield, 
Superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic survey, 



^/ # ^-- ,1,/ , 

^ ^U ^ ^ X ^ ^ ' 







^^%t, 







THE NFAV GOLD FIEIJjS OF ALASKA. Tm 

who has spent considerable time iu Alaska. He 
expresses the opinion that a railroad easily can be 
constructed from Taku Inlet to the Klondike gold 
fields, and believes that the enterprise will be worth 
undertaking because of the richness of the mines. 

"The gold," said General Duffield, in discussing 
the question, "has been ground out of the quartz 
by the pressure of the glacieis, which lie and move 
along the courses of the streams, exerting a tremen- 
dous pressure. This force is present to a more appre- 
ciable extent in Alaska than elsewhere, and I believe 
that as a consequence more placer gold will be found 
in that region than in any other part of the world." 

General Duffield thinks the gold hunters on the 
American side of the line have made the mistake of 
prospecting the large streams instead of the small 
ones. " When gold is precipitated," he said, " it 
sinks. It does not float far down stream. It is there- 
fore to be looked for along the small creeks and about 
the head waters of the larger tributaries of the Yukon. 
There is," he adds, " no reason why as rich finds may 
not be made on the American side of the line as in the 
Klondike district." 

Food Resources of Alaska. — Before the gold 
finds the immense territory of Alaska had attracted 
attention only to its resources in lumber, fish and furs. 
Now the question of its inhabitableness in the sen-^e 
of producing its own supplies has become a prominent 
one. While it is conceded that the valley of the upper 
Yukon is one of the most desolate in the world, it is 



'^6 THE KLONDIKE. 

also known that there are portions of the country 
where the climate is milder, and valleys here and 
there whose supplies may hereafter become of im- 
mense importance to the mining portion of the com- 
munity. Few persons are in possession of even such 
facts about these resources as exist. Some of them 
are as follows. 

Dr. Sheldon Jackon, Commissioner of Education, 
says : 

"The warmest friends of Alaska do not claim that 
it is rich in agricultural resources, or that it will agri- 
culturally bear comparison with the rich valleys of the 
Mississippi river ; but they do claim that while there 
are large areas of mountains and unproductive land 
agriculturally, yet there are valleys and plains where, 
with suitable care, many of the earlier vegetables, 
fruits and grains can be raised. 

"On Kodiak, on adjacent islands, and on the 
shores of Cook's Inlet, where there are small Russian 
Creole settlements, they have for three-quarters of a 
century supplied themselves with vegetables and pota- 
toes raised in their own gardens. During recent years 
the government and mission teachers in southeast 
Alaska have in some instances had good vegetable 
gardens. In northern Alaska, less than one hundred 
miles south of the arctic circle, the teachers of the 
Swedish Evangelical mission at Unalaska in 1891 
cleared four acres of ground, on which they raised 
seventy bushels of potatoes. As that region has a 
frozen subsoil covered with a heavy coating of moss, 
the removal of the moss and the cultivation of the 



THE NEW GOLl") FIELDS OE ALASK. I 57 

ground will cause the soil to thaw out at a greater 
depth than it would otherwise. So that years of cul- 
tivation will cause the ground to yield much more 
plentifully than when first cultivated. 

" In 1887, on the site of Lake lyabugo, on the head- 
waters of the Yukon, over 2,000 miles from Bering 
Sea, a missionary, passing along, saw ten heads of 
volunteer wheat, nearly ripe, on the 226. of August, in 
a place where some miners had camped the year before 
and dropped the seed. 

"Not only in the mild belt of Southern Alaska, 
but also in the arctic and subarctic belt of northern 
Alaska, various wild berries grow and ripen in profu- 
sion (cranberries, currants, raspberries, huckleberries, 
blackberries, strawberries), and there is no question 
that if the government places Alaska on an equal foot- 
ing with the other states and territories in the estab- 
lishment of one or more experimental stations it will 
be demonstrated that sufficient vegetables can be raised 
for the consumption of its people." 

Reference was made in a preceding chapter, with- 
out entering into details, to the introduction of the 
reindeer into Alaska, as a domestic animal. The at- 
tempt to do this has so far proved very successful, the 
introduction having been made about three years ago 
under the auspices of the U. S. government. In this 
connection there are facts not generally known, which 
may help to change the aspect of the food suppl}- of 
the far north very materially. Dr. Jackson says : 

" And if there is found a section so far North that 



58 THE KLONDIKE. 

the profitable raising of vegetables and grains becomes 
impossible, that region can be utilized by the intro- 
duction of herds of domestic reindeer. 

"Taking Norway and Sweden, where complete 
statistics are to be had, as a basis of calculation, and 
applying the same average to Alaska, it is found the 
country is capable of sustaining 9,200,000 head of 
reindeer, which will support a population of 287,500 
living like the Laps of Lapland. 

"The stocking of Alaska with tame reindeer 
means the opening up of the vast and almost inaccess- 
ible central region of northern and central Alaska to 
white settlers and civilization and the opening up of a 
vast commercial industry. Lapland, with 400,000 
reindeer, supplies the grocery stores of northern Eu- 
rope with smoked reindeer hams, smoked tongues, 
dried and tanned hides, and 23,000 carcasses per 
annum to the butcher shops. On the same basis, 
Alaska, with its capacity for 9,200,000 head of rein- 
deer, can supply the markets of North America with 
500,000 carcasses of venison annually, together with 
tons of delicious hams and tongues and finest leather. 
Surely the creation of an industry worth from $83,- 
000,000 to $100,000,000 where none now exists is 
worthy of the attention of the American people." 

Anothejr Road to the Gold Fields. — The out- 
line map printed herein shows a road to the gold fields 
additional to the routes mentioned in a previous chap- 
ter. By it the traveler may reach these fields in two 
months from interior cities in this country, possibly 
in six weeks. 



mi': XEW GOL!^ FFELnS OF . I /..IS A, I. r,«i 

The new route is in fact a very old one. Railroads, 
and steamers and other water-craft, almost cover the 
route. But before these were built it was the old 
Hudson Bay trail into the far north, and had been in 
use nearly a century. 

Calgary is a station on the Cinadiau Pacific rail- 
way, the terminus of that road being at New West- 
minster, on the coast in British Columbia, opposite 
Vancouver's Island, and about one hundred and 
eighty miles above Seattle. From Calgary a branch 
road runs north to Edmonton, and from that point to 
Athabasca Landing is a stage or wagon ride, or " port- 
age " of about forty miles. 

From Athabasca to Fort McPherson, which is situ- 
ated far north at the mouth of the Mackenzie river, 
there is a continuous waterway for canoe travel down 
stream. At Fort McPherson the Peel river extends 
southwest into the gold fields. From Edmonton to 
Fort McPherson the distance is 1,822 miles. 

There are two portages of some distance on this 
route ; one already mentioned from Edmonton to 
Athabasca, and at a place qalled Smith's Landing, 
sixteen miles, over which there is a tramway. 

With the exception of five other portages of a few 
hundred yards there is a down-grade water route all 
the way. Wherever there is a lake or a long stretch 
of deep-water navigation the Hudson Bay company 
has small freight steamers which ply during the sum- 
mer months between the portage points. 

From Edmonton a party of three men with a canoe 
should reach Fort McPherson within sixty days pro- 



60 THE KLONDIKE. 

vided they are strong and of some experience in that 
sort of travel. 

Experienced travelers recommend that the canoe 
be bought at home unless it be intended to hire In- 
dians with large bark canoes for the trip. Birch- 
bark canoes can be purchased large enough to carry 
three tons, but are said to be unreliable unless In- 
dians are taken along to keep them from getting 
water- logged. The Hudson Bay company will con- 
tract to take freight northward on their steamers. 

The great advantage claimed for this inland route 
is that it has long been an organized line of communi- 
cation. Travelers need not carry any more food than 
will take them from one Hudson Bay post to the next, 
and there is abundance of fish and wild fowl along the 
route. They can also get assistance at the posts in 
case of sickness or accident. 

It is possible to return by the dog -sled route 
in the winter. There is one mail to Fort McPher- 
son in the winter. Dogs for teams can be bought at 
any of the Hudson Bay posts which form a chain of 
roadhouses on the trip. ^ 

Parties traveling alone will need no guides until 
they get near Fort McPherson, the route from Ed- 
monton being so well defined. 

It is estimated that a party of three could provide 
themselves with food for the canoe trip of two months 
for $35. Pork, tea, flour and baking powder would 
suffice. 

Parties should consist of three men, as that is the 
crew of a canoe. It will take 600 pounds of food to 



THE NEW GOLP FIELDS OF ALASKA. HI 

carry three men over the route. The paddling is all 
done downstream except when they turn south up 
Peel river after reaching Fort Mackenzie, and sails 
should be taken, as there is often a favorable wind for 
days. There are large scows on the line manned by 
ten men and known as "sturgeon heads." They are 
like canal boats, but are punted along, and are used 
by the Hudson Bay people for taking supplies to 
the forts. 

This route may be taken from the northern inter- 
ior of this country by going to St. Paul, Minn., by 
rail, and there taking a train over the Canadian 
Pacific. Leaving St. Paul at 9 o'clock in the morn- 
ing, the international boundary at Portal will be 
crossed at 4 o'clock the next morning. At 2 : 22 the 
following morning the traveler will find himself at 
Calgary, where he will leave the main line of the 
Canadian Pacific and travel to Edmonton, where the 
rail portion of the journey ends. 

Laws Governing Mining Claims in Alaska. — 
On July 31, the misunderstanding and contentions 
regarding the laws that are applicable to Alaska, so 
far as lands and claims are concerned, were set at rest 
by a statement made by Commissioner Hermann of 
the General Land Office. Many inquiries on this 
question have come to the Interior department, and 
numerous applications have been made for copies of 
the public land laws, which, however, do not apply to 
Alaska. The general land officials have therefore 
investigated the laws that govern there. 



6^ THE KLONDIKE. 

The mineral land laws of the United States, town- 
site laws, which provide for the incorporation of town- 
sites and aquirement of title thereto from the United 
States government to the townsite trustees ; the law 
providing for trade and manufactures, giving each 
qualified person i6o acres of land in a square and 
compact form — all these, with the coal- land regula- 
tions, are distinct from the mineral regulations or 
laws, and the jurisdiction of neither coal laws nor 
public land laws extends to Alaska, the territory 
being expressly excluded by the laws themselves from 
their operation. 

The act approved May 17, 1884, providing for the 
civil government of Alaska, has this language as to 
mines and tninbig privileges : 

" The law of the United States relating to mining 
claims and rights incidental thereto shall, on and after 
the passage of this act, be in full force and effect in 
said district of Alaska, subject to such regulations as 
may be made by the Secretary of the Interior and ap- 
proved by the president," and "parties who have 
located mines or mining privileges thereon under the 
United States laws, applicable to the public domain, 
or have occupied, or improved, or exercised acts of 
ownership over such claims, shall not be disturbed 
therein, but shall be allowed to perfect title by pay- 
ments provided for." 

There is still more general authority. Without 
the special authority, above quoted, the act of July 4, 
1866, says: ': All valuable mineral deposits in lands 
belonging to the United States, both surveyed and un- 



THE NEW COLP FIELDS OF ALASKA. (W 

surveyed, are hereby declared to be free and open to 
exploration and purchase, and lands in which these 
are found to occupation and purchase by citizens of 
the United States, and by those who have declared an 
intention to become such, under the rules prescribed 
by law, and according to local customs of rules of 
miners in the several mining districts, so far as the 
same are applicable and not inconsistent with the laws 
of the United States." 

It will be noted therefore that the general mining 
laws of the United States, a brief of which has been 
given in a previous chapter, are by the Acts above 
quoted made applicable to Alaska. There has been a 
misunderstanding because of the special exception 
made of that country by the laws themselves, until 
those exceptions were set aside by the Acts of July 4, 
1866, and May 17, 1874. It will be remembered, 
also, that the patenting of mineral lands in Alaska is 
not a new thing, for that work has been goins^ on, as 
the cases have come in from time to time since 1884. 
The confusion arising from the fact of Alaska having 
been excepted in the action of certain U. S. statutes is 
thus set aside, and persons who now go, and who 
locate claims within U. S. territory, may be assured 
that the mining statutes in force elsewhere also in 
general apply to Alaska. 

Officiai. Statkmknt of thk Cumatf;.— Under 
the direction of Secretary of Agriculture James Wil- 
son, Willis L. Moore, Chief of the Weather bureau, 
makes public the following : 



(U 777^ KLONDIKE. 

"The general conception of Alaskan climate is 
largely due to those who follow the sea, and this is 
not strange when we consider the vast extent of shore 
line (over 26,000 miles) possessed by that Territory. 

"The climate of the coast and the interior is un- 
like in many respects, and as the differences are in- 
tensified in this, as perhaps in few other countries, by 
exceptional physical conditions. 

"The natural contrast between land and sea is 
here tremendously increased by the current of warm 
water that impinges on the coast of British Columbia, 
one branch flowing northward toward Sitka and 
thence westward to the Kodiak and Shumagin Is- 
lands. The fringe of islands that separates the main 
land from the Pacific Ocean, from Dixon Sound north- 
ward, and also a strip of the main land for possible- 
twenty miles back from the sea, following the sweep 
of the coast as it curves to the northwestward, to the 
western extremity of Alaska, form a distinct climatic 
division which may be termed temperate Alaska. 

"The temperature rarely falls to zero. Winter 
does not set in until December i and by the last of 
May the snow has dissapeared, except on the moun- 
tains. The mean winter temperature of Sitka is 32.5°; 
but little less than that of Washington, D. C. While 
Sitka is fully exposed to the sea influences, places 
farther inland, but not over the coast range of moun- 
tains, as Killisnoo and Juneau, have also a mild tem- 
perature throughout the winter months. 

"The temperature changes from month to month 
in temperate Alaska are small, not exceeding 25° from 



THE NEW aOL/) FIELDS OF ALASKA. 65 

midwinter to midsummer. The average temperature 
of July, the warmest month of summer, rarely reaches 
55°, and the highest temperature for a single day sel- 
dom reaches 75°. 

"The rainfall of temperate Alaska is notorious the 
world over, and not only as regards the quantity but 
also as to the manner of its falling — viz.: in long and 
incessant rains and drizzles. Cloud and fog naturally 
abound, there being on an average but sixty-six clear 
days in the year. 

"Alaska is a country of striking contrasts, in cli- 
mate as well as in topography. When the sun shines 
the atmosphere is remarkably clear and the scenic 
effects are magnificent ; all nature seems to be in holi- 
day attire. But the scene may change very quickly. 
The sky becomes overcast, the winds increase in 
force, rain begins to fall, the evergreens sigh omin- 
ously, and utter desolation and loneliness prevail. 

" North of the Aleutian Islands the coast climate 
becomes more rigorous in winter, but in summer the 
difference is much less marked. Thus, at St. Mich- 
ael's, a short distance above the mouth of the Yukon, 
the mean summer temperature is 50 degrees, but 4 
degrees cooler than Sitka. The mean summer tem- 
perature of Point Barrow, the most northerly point in 
the United States, is 36.8 degrees, but four-tenths of 
a degree less than the temperature of the air flowing 
across the summit of Pike's Peak, Colo. The rainfall 
of the coast region north of the Yukon delta is small, 
diminishing to less than ten inches within the arctic 
circle. 



66 THE KLONDIKE. 

"The climate of the interior, including in that 
designation practically all of the country except a 
narrow fringe of coastal margin and the territory be- 
fore referred to as temperate Alaska, is one of extreme 
rigor in winter, with a brief but relatively hot summer, 
especially when the sky is free from clouds. 

**In the Klondike region in midwinter the sun 
arises from 9:30 to 10 A. m. and sets from 2 to 3 p. m., 
the total length of day being about four hours. Re- 
membering that the sun rises but a few degrees above 
the horizon, and that it is wholly obscured on a great 
many days, the character of the winter months may 
easily be imagined. 

"The mean summer temperature of the interior 
doubtless ranges between 60° and 70°." 

It will be observed that in this official observation 
of the Alaska climate for six months the average, or 
mean, and the extreme, of midwinter temperature is 
not given, there having not been opportunity for exact 
observation. The degree of cold sometimes experi- 
enced is, however, a matter of personal experience 
with persons whose statements are given in previous 
chapters. Like England, Alaska owes that remarka- 
ble climate of the coast to a warm sea-current, and 
this will in time to come doubtless prove the salvation 
of the country. 

Mining at Home. — Perhaps no greater service 
can be done in the way of giving information about 
the new-found mines than by saying a word in regard 
to those intending to mine while staying close at 



THE NEW GOLD EI ELDS OE ALASKA, G7 

home. There are now organizing hundreds of 
"schemes." How many of these ventures are rep- 
utable only time can tell, but it is very possible that 
the percentage of them that are is small indeed. 

In some of these new concerns the fraud is already 
apparent, and when the time is ripe from every quar- 
ter of the country will go up a wail of sorrow. In 
many of the so called "promoting" companies the 
methods of the discretionary operator are visible, 
and in some of them old hands at bucket-shop swin- 
dling have been found working with feverish activity. 

One peculiarity about most of the companies is 
that they come out plainly with requests for money to 
prospect. The stock sold is not on any specific claim, 
but is, in fact, nothing more than a "grub-stake," as 
it is called in mining camps. In other words, the 
companies ask their stock-buyers to put up the capi- 
tal, while the company sends out some one to pro- 
spect in: the gold region. 

Another outcrop of the fever is the man with 
information about the gold country to sell. Ten dol- 
lars is all he asks — come early and avoid the rush. 
Another asks whether you wish to go to the Klondike 
— send twenty-five cents for particulars. 

Another, who advertises himself as reliable, pleads 
for some one to put up the money for him to sail into 
the Klondike — he will divide all he digs out. 

Expeditions, also, are fitting out, and any one is 

entitled to join upon the payment of a certain sum. 

Apparently the most serious of all is one where the 

, fixed price is $i,ooo, one-halt payable here, the other 



68 THE KLONDIKE. 

at Sitka. In addition, twenty- five per cent of the 
profits from any claims located is stipulated in the con- 
tract. An element of gambling attaches to it, how- 
ever, in the fact that when claims have been located 
lots will be drawn for their distribution. 

There will be stock companies innumerable, organ- 
ized ostensibly to exploit the northwest. Possibly 
some will do it. They will be directed by men who 
will set honestly about the business of trade and trans- 
portation and mining, who will handle honestly the 
funds intrusted to them, and who, by enterprise and 
square dealing, will make dividends for the stock- 
holders. 

There will be other companies organized to exploit 
the pockets of the people at home. They will not 
move a boat, they will not grub-stake a miner, they 
will not sell a shovel, a pick, or a pan. Their direct- 
ors will get money from the unsuspecting and use it 
for their own purposes. If the boom holds out and 
grows to sufficient size they will play the part of the 
adventurers who turned the city of Panama into a 
modern Babylon with the rnoney contributed by the 
people of France. 

The person contemplating investment in the stock 
of an Alaska mining company cannot be too cautious. 
He will have little security against fraud except in 
the honor and intelligence of the men who get his 
money. He cannot follow them to Alaska to see that 
they use it properly. 

In short, sending capital into the Klondike will be 
even more precarious than going 37'ourself, for the 
risks of nature will be added to the risk of man's 
rascality. 



THE NEW GOLD FIELDS OF ALASKA. 69 

Further Action of the Dominion Govern- 
ment. — Reference to preceding page 49 will show the 
action of the Canadian Council at Ottawa with respect 
to duties, taxes, royalties, etc., in the Klondike gold 
fields. An instance of the rapid action of modern 
times may be found in the fact that already that de- 
cree of the Council has been reconsidered. On August 
1 2th the project of compelling miners to pay from ten 
to twenty per centum royalty was set aside because 
of arguments brought against it by Canadians them- 
selves, principally by Mr. Frank Oliver, of Alberta, 
who said : 

" If the diggings were not rich this tax would either 
be impossible or it would prevent mining, and if they 
are rich it would only bring on a fight in a region 
which, all things considered, Canada could not expect 
to rule by main force except at a cost that would be 
much greater than the profit." 

This convincing reasoning seems to have had the 
desired effect in persuading the ministry to abandon 
that portion of the scheme that imposed the royalties. 

The Results of the " Rush," as now Known. 
— Already many hundreds have started and are far on 
their way toward the El Dorado of the far north. 
Warnings were unheeded chiefly, perhaps, because of 
the difficulty of the average mind in comprehending 
the immense difference in climate, in the summer-time 
too, between all we know of what we call weather and 
the almost perpetual winter of the north. Corre- 
spondents describe many of these new Argonauts as 



70 THE KLONDIKE. 

people who were never away from home before, and 
who are astonished at the difficulties they are called 
to face even before they have entered upon the actual 
hardships of the route. Abandoning baggage they 
in some cases still press on, moved by only one 
thought — to get to the land of gold. Some others are 
described as buying grain-sacks to hold the gold after 
they have reached the place. Others, surprised and 
discouraged at the beginning, throw away or sell for 
one-tenth of its cost their equipment, and turn back, 
praying only now for a possible return to the life they 
left. Some of the details are given in a letter from 
the U. S. Commissioner at Dyea who says : 

"Of the 3,000 miners here not more than 250 are 
provided with horses, and it will be a physical impos- 
sibility for the Indian packers to get more than 250 
outfits over the trails before winter sets in. The In- 
dian packers at Dyea are on a strike. They have a 
good thing, but they want something better. When 
a steamer anchors in the bay, a mile from the shore, 
the stuff is piled on the rocky clefts and benches on 
either side of the long and narrow passage, as the 
banks on the right and left are too steep for the trail. 
So the miners have to hire Indians with canoes to get 
their baggage up to the sandy beach. This costs i)^ 
cents a pound. The miner then carries his outfit a 
couple of hundred yards farther to the high water- 
mark and pitches his tent for a rest. He is soon ready 
to make a start, but only goes one mile when he 
comes to a river about three feet deep and from 50 to 
TOO feet across, and very swift. He must wade and 



THE NEW GOLD FIELDS OF ALASKA. 71 

take the chances of getting his outfit wet, to say noth- 
ing of getting the cramps himself in the ice-cold 

water. 

«« . . . . The packing over the roads will not 
last more than six weeks, and then nothing can be 
done until the river freezes over ; even then dogs will 
not be used. The spring excitement will begin about 
February i, and I would advise all to remain away till 
that time." 

Nevertheless the writer adds : 

'* Old Yukonershere are positive there will be even 
richer diggings discovered next year than Klondike, 
although there is enough gold there in sight and in 
drift to keep up the gold output for a decade." 

A Question of the Future. — By the time the 
readers will have seen these lines the season during 
which it is possible to reach Alaska will have closed. 
But the desire to go there will not have been appeased. 
In the minds of men, especially of old miners, there are 
many intentions to be realized, or tried, during the 
coming short summer. Since the conditions of one 
great find are known similar ones will be carefully 
examined. It is impossible that the most adventur- 
ous, tireless, solitary and restless of men, the profes- 
sional miner, will rest all his hopes upon the banks of 
a stream destined soon to be crowded with contiguous 
claims, and the late-comer crowded out, though so far 
only thirty miles of its course have been prospected. 
But the standing conditions ought not to be ignored. 
There will always be in Northern Alaska a want of 



72 THE KLONDIKE. 

the means of living. The Alaskan climate is all hard, 
all remote, all cold. Some parts of the immense terri- 
tory are less so than others. Timber is one essential 
of a mining country, transportation is another. A sys- 
tem of easier transportation across country now that it 
is in great demand ; some plainer and easier passes than 
have yet been found, are wanted. To go to Alaska 
fully supplied for at least one year's stay is one thing ; 
to go rashly unprepared and trusting to luck, and to 
hasten blindly to the Klondike, is quite another. 

Much might be added here about the danger of 
making mistakes in going to the Alaska and British 
American gold region. It might be pointed out that 
new diggings have been found in California, and that 
Colorado is producing now about twenty millions in 
gold for every twelve months, and that if a man wants 
to mine he need not migrate to the region of the 
north. 

These facts and arguments are always lost. The 
alluring elements of adventure and chance enter. 
There is without question an immense gold field in the 
north, and on American soil. If at his leisure a 
young and strong man goes there in the face of the 
idleness and distress that until recently have been the 
conditions in this country ; if when he reaches there 
he goes to work and keeps at work with the idea of 
persistence rather than of gambling and chance, he 
may have success, and it may prove the opportunity 
of his life. Good health and comparative youth, a 
determination to simply embrace a great opportunity 
and win without the aid of mere chance, a determina- 



THE NEW GOLD FIELDS OF ALASKA. 73 

tion to use the best of such opportunities that oflfers, 
and regard that as destiny rather than one which may 
prove better, a cool head and persistent work, will 
make at least a few rich in the end who would inevit- 
ably fail with the usual idea. 

The Route by the Chilkoot Pass. — A personal 
experience, as related by Dr. E. O. Crewe at Tatter- 
sail's, Chicago, August 15, is interesting in connec- 
tion with the question prominent in many minds : 
" How shall I go, 'overland' or by the sea and up 
the Yukon?" The stories of hardships suffered by 
travelers over the Chilkoot Pass, as printed recently 
in the newspapers, he said were exaggerations. He 
had made the trip on three occasions, and described 
in detail its various stages. Some of the details of 
this overland journey are as follows : 

There is a chain of lakes, Bennett, Taku and 
Marsh. There is a way of following certain shores 
and of avoiding certain sharp rocks and other difficul- 
ties, and these are details of local knowledge to be 
acquired when one has reached the place. There is a 
way of building rafts and procuring boats, and there 
are portages around rapids. All these things are the 
usual incidents of travel, and there is no difficulty 
that is at all insurmountable. At the proper season, 
the fall, there is game ; but it is necessary to empha- 
size the fact that food-supplies must under all circum- 
stances be carefully looked after as the chiefest 
necessities. 

The steamers carry passengers to a point six miles 
north of Dyea, and following this there is an over- 



74 THE KLONDIKE. 

land trip of twenty-eight miles. This requires three 
days, and there is one hard day. The first day, 
to Sheep Camp, is a pleasant walk. The next two 
bring the traveler to Stone House, and here begins 
the pass. There it is necessary to get up early in the 
morning to get an early start, and that night one may 
camp three or four miles beyond the pass. A strong 
man may cross the pass itself with one hundred 
pounds on his back in three hours. Sometimes it is 
like climbing the roof of a house. Sometimes it is in 
snow and slush up to the knees. But there is no danger 
and no great difficulty. You cannot lose 3'our way. 
There is a wall of rock on one side and a wall of ice 
on the other — no chasms to fall into, no crevices in 
the ice. It is not as hard as climbing half way up 
Pike's Peak, a trick that hundreds of tourists do every 
year for pleasure. And that is all there is to the hor- 
rors of Chilkoot Pass. 

The cost of living in the Yukon region, Dr. Crewe 
said, had been greatly exaggerated, and he told how 
every spring oranges could be bought for fifty cents a 
dozen at Dawson, fresh onions and potatoes for fifteen 
cents a pound, and flour and other provisions much 
cheaper than they can be packed in. He advised any 
intending to go to wait until late next March, then 
take the Chilkoot Pass route, when they can haul 500 
pounds over the pass on a sledge, when the snow is 
frozen at night, easier than they can pack fifty pnunHs 
over at this season. Next season, it is not improba- 
ble there may be a hundred boats on the Yukon where 
now are but twenty, and at St. Michael's Island, 



THE XE W GOLD FIELDS OF ALASKA. 75 

eighty miles from the mouth of the Yukon, he said 
there is now enough food supply to last 10,000 men 
five years. 

"Many men will come back disheartened," said 
he, * ' but it will be because they are too easily dis- 
couraged, have too little pluck, or are unwilling to 
work. Alaska is the poor man's mining country. It 
is ever}'- man for himself, and thousands of men who 
have nothing will go there and in a year, by proper 
diligence, wash out $2,000 to $10,000, and many of 
them a great deal more, above all their expenses." 

Scientific Mining in Alaska.— Many people 
who know something of mining have suspected that 
the work of scientific mining had not yet begun in 
Alaska, and that it had a splendid future. Theory, 
at least, leads to the conclusion that by whatever 
process the gold was placed in the Alaska placers, 
much of it must have got into the beds — not the 
banks — of the streams, and lies there. Companies 
following this idea are now forming for the purpose of 
dredging for gold in the deeper waters, and in the 
Yukon itself. It is believed that the wealth of the 
banks is comparatively trivial as compared to the bed 
of the river. This gold is mostly dust, and investi- 
gations conducted by the assayer tend to prove that 
it has been gradually washed to the center of the 
rivers, where it is now imbedded in greater quantities 
than ever before discovered. 



76 THE KLONDIKE. 

Two Nkw American Bkasts of Burden. — One 
is the dog and the other the reindeer. Both have 
been alluded to in connection with travel and trans- 
portation in previous chapters. Three months ago it 
had perhaps never occurred to the average American 
that the dog would ever be to him a necessity, such 
as the horse is, or be used for the same purposes. If 
he goes to Alaska it is likely this situation will be 
changed, and one of the reasons for the change will 
be that the intense cold spits the hoofs of horses, and 
the dog must take their place as a draught animal. 

But the Alaskan dog is not a fair representative 
of the dog tribe. A physical description is that he 
looks almost like the gray wolf ; a little smaller and 
a little hairier. Mentally, so to speak, he is a vicious 
brute, without the natural affection of the usual dog 
for man, snapping and biting upon all occasions, and 
incapable of responding to caresses even if he got 
them — which he never does. In cases of extreme 
hunger his own master is not safe. His usefulness 
is, however, unquestioned, for his endurance har- 
nessed to a sledge is wonderful. These draught-dogs 
are used in teams of from four to twelve, and in an 
emergency only one may be used, the man pushing 
and the dog pulling. He is almost unaffected by the 
very great cold, sleeping in the snow and eating a 
scanty ration of dried salmon. 

The reindeer of the domesticated species is not a 
native of Alaska, the American reindeer, so-called, 
being the Barren Ground and Woodland Caribou. 
The need of the domesticated species for the Indians 



THE XEW GOLD FIELDS OF ALASKA 77 

in Alaska was seen some years ago, and from those 
imported at that time considerable numbers have 
sprung. The advantages of the enterprise were 
pointed out in a preceding chapter. 

The reindeer is singular in the fact that both males 
and females have horns — the only instance of the 
kind in the deer species. It is exclusively a northern 
animal, and one whose value it would be difficult to 
overestimate, since it serves as horse, cow and sheep, 
all in one. Weighing full grown not more than 
four hundred to six hundred pounds, it can draw 
three hundred pounds on a sledge, and its hoofs, as 
large as those of a cow, and opening widely, make it 
especially a snow animal. It lives by browsing on 
stunted shrubs in summer, and on moss in winter, 
and the latter it can paw away several feet of snow to 
reach. Moss is one of the characteristic growths of 
Alaska. A hundred miles over frozen snow is not an 
unusual day's journey for the European reindeer. 

The Alaska Savages. — As to these people, 
usually, if the way taken is either by way of Juneau 
and the Chilkoot Pass or the Mackenzie river, they 
are the first people seen. At some remote period now 
absolutely forgotten they came from Asia. The north- 
west coast Indians are so like the people known as 
Eskimo that, though not known by that name, there 
is no essential difference. Of the inhabitants of the 
Aleutian islands the same may be said. The Eskimo, 
strictly speaking, live in the northern and north- 
western portions of the country, the Indians 



78 THE KLONDIKE. 

thus designated being ofif-shoots or kindred, and, 
as stated, very like the Eskimo. In many respects 
these people are peculiar. They live exclusively 
upon fish and sea animals, They have no chiefs. 
In mental ability they stand high among savages. 
They have never been known to go to war among 
themselves, though they have always been at enmity 
with the southern tribes, and in self-defense are 
dreaded fighters. There is no fear of treachery or 
massacre by them. They will work, and it will be 
found that they understand quite well how to charge 
for it in proportion to the emergency. In the making 
of weapons and tools of the chase, and in the shaping 
and finish of their garments, the entire Eskimo kin- 
dred have always been remarkably skillful. They 
are equally so in the work required of them by the 
white men who hire them, and in many respects they 
stand in striking contrast to the usual Indian as we 
know him. " Blubber eaters " is not strictly a good 
name for them, for blubber is too precious a commod- 
ity to eat. They are more properly fish eaters. 
Those Indians with whom the voyager to Alaska is 
likely to come in contact know white people very 
well, are not untrustworthy, and as laborers and 
guides will be found quite indispensable. In the 
valley of the Yukon, and north of it, they are said 
to be slowly lessening in number. 

Women and the GoIvD Country. — Few women 
have ever gone, or will probably ever go, to the re- 
gion of the Klondike. Still fewer have ever led the 



THE NEW GOLD FIELDS OF ALASKA. 7S) 

common life of the country, so as to have its scenes, 
climate and vicissitudes touch them naturally. Yet 
the brief story of the excitement, so far as it has 
gone, is a striking illustration of the changed idea of 
the sex in respect to woman's field of action. In the 
old times of California the going and coming of 
woman — the possibility of it — was not thought of. 
So late as the middle of August, 1897, the daily 
newspapers published lists of the adventurous dames 
who had determined to brave a climate at which strong 
men hesitate. One, it is said, " will publish a news- 
paper "; another will make the journey " as a pleas- 
ure trip only," and the third " wants to dig Alaskan 
gold." Still another "goes as her husband's com- 
panion." A lad}^ artist " will desert Art for wealth." 
One has the motive of ' ' keeping house for her hus- 
band," while another "hopes to make a fortune." 
Two Sisters of Mercy have charity as their only mis- 
sion. A San Francisco woman intends to feed hungry 
miners in a restaurant. One only is coming back, 
and she was born in Alaska and wants to go to 
school. Many of the brief biographies of these ladies 
are given. It is news. The strangeness of the 
resolve excites public curiosity. 

No comments are made here. The fate of the ma- 
jority in Chilkoot Pass cannot yet be known. But if 
the women who have already started or are certainly 
going, ever succeed in establishing themselves in the 
new diggings, the history of the Alaska gold fields 
must necessarily be different from that of all others, 
and woman's influence seems destined to be exerted 



80 THE KLONDIKE. 

there all the earlier in curious proportion to the dis- 
tance, the difficulty and the danger. 

Yet it cannot be said to be an experiment whose 
results are certain, It is worth while to reflect that 
in most of the vast territory of Alaska the home, as 
we understand that term, is, and must remain impos- 
sible in the nature of the case. It is not good that 
the average American woman should realize this fact 
and still wish to go there and remain for an indefinite 
period. This view still leaves open the question most 
people will think of first — the question of physical 
ability to endure the hardships of the country that 
may be full of gold, but is nevertheless the dreariest 
and coldest ever occupied by white men for any pur- 
pose. As to actual work in the mines, even the coun- 
try from whom we bought Alaska, has amid all the 
horrors of her Siberia never condemned women to 
such a task — only men. 



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